Training the Teacher Part 33

3. Who must lead in the teaching process--teachers or pupils? Why?

4. What is the highest art in teaching?

5. Who should do most of the talking--pupils or teacher?

6. Why should a teacher work with pupils out of the cla.s.s hour as well as in it?

7. What should be the teacher's att.i.tude toward caprice or toward viciousness?

8. Should the teacher aim at a few things or many? Why?

Lesson 4

What the Pupil Should Do

#26. The Pupil's Part.#--The part the pupil takes in the act of learning is all-important. The success of the recitation is in a large degree conditioned by the att.i.tude of the pupil. He must be organized and directed by the teacher for the process of instruction. What the pupil will do in the recitation is conditioned upon the skill and power of the teacher. When the pupil fails to do what he should do the fault usually lies with the teacher. The pupil does that which the teacher stimulates him to do.

#27.# The pupil should approach the recitation _willingly and gladly_.

The pupil who is in cla.s.s against his will is a difficult pupil to teach, and it is doubtful whether or not any lasting good results from enforced attendance. Parents should not overlook this fact, and teachers will find here a hint of unusual significance. This willing, joyous approach to the lesson is conditioned upon at least four things: (a) the preparation of the lesson by the pupil in advance; (b) the absence of other appeals more enticing to the interest of the pupils; (c) the quality of teaching power and skill exercised by the teacher; (d) the spirit of good-will and of kindly concern that rules the school as a whole.

#28. The Pupil's Preparation.#--From the smaller pupils no formal preparation can be demanded in advance. But for all, the lesson should be read, either by the pupil or by some one in the home, prior to the time of the recitation. It is a good plan to indicate briefly the week preceding just what leading ideas and incidents the pupils should master before the recitation occurs. There are many indirect acts that the pupil may perform during the week that may fittingly be regarded as preparation for the lesson; such as visits to the sick, efforts to bring new members to the cla.s.s, incidents of the week which made a marked impression for good, and kindred matters. These can all be touched upon by the teacher by judicious questioning, and in this way, at the opening of the recitation, lead each pupil to make some statement of a good done. This will promote the moral atmosphere so vital to successful interpretation of the lesson.

#29. Divided Interests.#--Many times the pupil comes reluctantly to the Sunday-school because his interests lie for that hour elsewhere.

If the parents go on a pleasure trip, it is unfair to compel the child to forfeit the same opportunity. Wise parents will show the more excellent way by themselves accompanying their children to the Sunday-school. My own father never led his boys to the silent recesses of the mountain brooks to see G.o.d's wonder world until after we had returned from the Sunday-school. To enjoy the former we were unconsciously encouraged to attend the latter. The so-called "liberal"

Sabbath is the foe of the Sunday-school, and all friends of the best things should oppose the lessening of the power that wins childhood for the Master through regular attendance upon his school.

#30.# When pupils dislike the teacher because he is weak or rude or petulant or unprepared to teach, it is difficult to keep these pupils in regular attendance. Each teacher should constantly ask himself, How may I personally add to the attractiveness of the Sunday-school?

Careful inquiry and close supervision of the cla.s.ses by the superintendent should compel good teaching or a prompt change of teachers. It is useless to expect pupils to love the Sunday-school well enough to endure a worthless teacher. How often pupils grow weary in attendance because the teacher has no power to woo the young spirit to the fountains of love and light! On the other hand, how gladly and how regularly children turn to the Sunday-school when a great-hearted and warm-spirited teacher is always there to welcome and to nourish them!

#31.# There is a marvelous attractive power in a well-organized school. When the spirit that rules in it and the organization that guides it are so wisely fostered as to create in the school an atmosphere of genuine stimulation the pupil will find it easy to come gladly, to say with the Psalmist, "I was glad when they said unto me, let us go unto the house of Jehovah."

#32. Reverence.#--In the recitation proper, the pupil should be helped to be reverent, well-behaved, and actively absorbed in the lesson. He should be shown the gains of complying promptly and cheerfully with the requests of his teacher; the King's business must be conducted with decency and dispatch. He should develop a quickening concern for the welfare of his cla.s.smates and foster a wholesome support to the cla.s.s as an organization. It is not always the lesson taught but the spirit that rules during the lesson that wins the young spirit to adoration and service.

#33. Regularity and Promptness.#--The early acquisition of the habits of regularity and promptness in attendance are virtues of no mean moment in the life of the learner. Whatever may be legitimately done to promote these habits is worthily done. An essential part of the discipline of life lies in acquiring dependable habits. It is the systematic attendance upon the Sunday-school that at last leads the pupil to say again, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto the house of Jehovah." Some unique and valuable exercise at the opening of the recitation, occupying but a minute or two of time, will often prove of great value. I have headed this chapter, "What the pupil should do," because it is not what the pupil thinks, nor what he says, that is of greatest moment. It is his conduct in the cla.s.s and his conduct during the week in home, in school, in play, that tests most directly the value of the teaching he receives. The focus of teacher concern is not what the pupil learns, but what the pupil does; not thought, but conduct; not theory, but practise; not ideas, but acts; not ability to answer questions, but ability to live a clean, sweet, quiet Christian life. All teaching that falls short of this goal is unworthy teaching. The supreme test of teaching, laid down by the Master, is that we should do the will of our Father that is in heaven.

Test Questions

1. Whose fault is it, generally, if the pupil fails to do what he ought in the cla.s.s?

2. What four things help to the pupil's willing approach to the lesson?

3. In what ways may a pupil prepare for the lesson period?

4. How may the pupil be spared a division of interest?

5. What should be the pupil's att.i.tude and bearing during the recitation?

6. What should be the real focus of the teacher's concern about the pupil?

Lesson 5

What Teaching Is

#34. Teaching Defined.#--The Sunday-school teacher as much as any other teacher should understand clearly what teaching is. Teaching is not telling, and no amount of talking to the pupil can be considered as teaching. Teaching is not determined by anything that happens outside the pupil, but by the action of the pupil's soul upon the things that are presented to it through the senses. _Teaching may be defined as causing a human soul to know._

#35.# Everything outside the learner may be considered his teacher. We are taught in the broadest sense by the spirit of G.o.d's universe expressed in terms of order and law. We are taught in a more restricted sense by our immediate environment, and especially by the people whose lives come in close contact with our own. In the most restricted sense we are taught by a trained mind, and this trained mind belongs to a person called a teacher. The process of teaching may be considered as the act of bringing into the consciousness of the learner the knowledge already in the consciousness of the teacher. We cannot teach what we do not know. Teaching ends when the pupil knows all that the teacher knows.

#36. Impression and Expression.#--When I say that I know a certain thing, I mean that my soul possesses that thing and knows that it possesses it; this is _consciousness_. The teaching act completes itself when the learner is able to express in language or otherwise to the satisfaction of the teacher the facts in consciousness. In other words, the soul is not fully educated until it has reached the point of expression.

#37.# It will be seen from this that teaching is possible only when the soul is actively seeking new knowledge. This attempt of the soul to seek new knowledge causes it, for one reason or another, to focus itself upon some one object of thought to the exclusion of all other objects of thought. _This act is called attention._ When the will directs the attention it is called _voluntary_ attention. When some other agency than the will directs the attention it is called _involuntary_ attention.

#38. Securing Attention.#--The greatest art in teaching is to secure attention. The highest form of attention is voluntary attention. The young child does not possess sufficient will-power to control attention; consequently in the early grades some other agent than a command of the will must hold attention. This other agent in a general way may be characterized as _interest_. In other words, the young child's interests hold his attention, and the thing in which he takes the greatest interest will easiest attract his attention.

#39.# There are certain well-known principles underlying the interest of the child. First, his curiosity; second, novelty, or unexpectedness; third, imitativeness; fourth, ill.u.s.trations based upon his experience. The teacher cannot be too careful to consider what is of interest to a child. We cannot measure the interests of a child by the interests of an adult. Here the study of child nature is the only safe and adequate guidance.

#40. How Knowledge Reaches the Soul.#--There are but five gateways to the soul of a child, called the senses:--Seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling. There are no other channels of approach. Whatever increases the breadth of this sense-approach in a subject of study increases the interest of the learner in that subject. If I tell a child about a _ball_, I utilize his sense of hearing; if I show him a ball, at the same time I describe it, I utilize seeing and hearing; if I hand him a ball, as I describe it, I utilize touching, seeing, and hearing. A single fact reaching consciousness through the senses and recognized in consciousness is called a percept or a particular notion. It is sometimes called an idea. The soul in giving expression to an idea uses a word or some other sign for the idea. Thus words are the signs of ideas.

#41.# When other facts of a similar character reach consciousness, and are identified there with the first percept, the percept becomes a concept, general notion or general idea, just as the percept is an individual idea; that is, the percept stands for one object apprehended in consciousness; the concept stands for a group of similar objects under one name apprehended in consciousness. All the common nouns are concepts just as all proper nouns are percepts. For example, in the sentence, "Washington was a brave man," it is plain that "Washington" is a particular idea or percept and "man" is a general idea or concept.

#42. Judgment and Reasoning.#--The aim of the teacher is, first, to secure clear percepts, and then rapidly to change these percepts into concepts, which is only another way of saying that good teaching relates the things in the soul in such a way as to give the child the fewest possible terms with which to carry the largest possible number of particular facts. Concepts are the shorthand of the soul's language. When these concepts are compared and their agreement or disagreement noted the soul is forming judgments. When these judgments are expressed in language the soul is forming sentences. When these judgments are compared and their agreement or disagreement noted, the soul is reasoning. Sentences are the signs of judgments or reasons, just as words are the signs of percepts or concepts. Thus the percept first comes; the percept grows into the concept; the concept into the judgment; the judgment into reasoning; and these are the four steps in the process of knowing. They are the tools of thought. Teaching must be a training in the use of these tools.

#43. Memory# is of little use unless it is simply the power to hold things clearly understood by the soul. It is not good teaching to burden the memory with ma.s.ses of things not clearly perceived and conceived, although it may be at the beginning not at all objectionable to commit to memory certain great utterances from the Bible and other standard literature, even when the meaning is not clearly and fully apprehended. But at the earliest time possible these should be a.n.a.lyzed and the meaning worked into forms of clear knowledge.

#44. Imagination.#--Imagination is the power of the soul to work up into new combinations the things in memory. Memory keeps things as the soul got them through the senses. The products of memory have a basis in experience. The products of imagination have no such basis in experience. Imagination is the creator of new products. It cares not for facts, but works after its own fancy. It is a more dangerous power because more free. To curb it at the outset is necessary. To allow it free range is to open the way for statements from the child that often alarm the parent or teacher. But when once the moral sense is awakened and governs imagination the latter becomes the agency that creates all art and enriches all life.

#45.# Teaching aims to develop by appropriate exercise all these powers of the soul. What the pupil learns is not so important as what power he gains in the control and use of his thinking processes under the guidance of a skilful teacher.

Test Questions

1. What is teaching?

2. When does teaching end?

3. What is consciousness?

4. What marks the completion of the teaching act?

5. What is attention? Voluntary? Involuntary?